In Which Faanshi Rescues a Moth Priest

Moving on through the Dawnguard plotline, to the point where I rescued Dexion Evicus!

Highlights

• Play date: 7/23/2022
• Session number in this run: 42
• Started at beach in front of Castle Volkihar
• Boinged from there directly to Fort Dawnguard (which dropped me in Dayspring Canyon)
• Came in on the fight with the trio of vampires; helped the Dawnguard kill them, and one of those vampires let me get another blood sample as well
• Reported in to Isran that welp, I found a vampire, and she had an Elder Scroll, and i know it sounds bad but hear me out, killing her was kind of not an option
• Got his directive to go find Sorine and Gunnar
• Boinged to the Reach to get Sorine first
• Confronted en route to reaching her:
  • Fighting spiders; sicced the dremora on them
  • Blood Dragon; sicced the storm atronachs and Jordis on them
  • Noted that the dragon was also fighting with nearby Forsworn
  • Found but did not engage a Forsworn camp
  • Necromancers who wanted revenge for Malyn Varen
  • Spotted second dragon as I found Sorine but it didn’t actually come over to engage
• I think it was here that I leveled up to 54? Took Stamina bump and first Alchemy perk
• Convinced Sorine to return to Fort Dawnguard
• Gunnar’s target locale was Fallowstone Cave this time, so boinged to Riften Stables to leave the horse there and hoofed it
• Stopped to sell stuff to Ahkari since the Khajiit were on site
• Then headed over to the cave
• Encountered en route:
  • Three cave bears, sicced the dremora on them
  • Leftovers from a fight that was apparently between pit wolves from Cragslane, and skeletons
  • Found dead bouncer and living Vigilant of Stendarr nearby
• Found Gunnar outside the cave; agreed to help him take out the bear he was after
• Headed in there and had to go fairly far in to find the target cave bear; killed another cave bear while at it
• Tthere was a new giant nearby but didn’t get close enough to have to fight it
• Gunnar went on ahead and I boinged back to Fort Dawnguard to meet him there
• Greetings again, Isran of the Dawnguard, Khajiit thinks you are a very paranoid person
• Greetings again, Serana, Khajiit is surprised but pleased to see you here, and she will help you
• Serana asked to come with me but refused to do so unless it was just her and me, so sent Jordis home to Heljarchen
• Slept the night on a cot after the “why is Serana back” conversation
• But first: got heavy Dawnguard armor from Gunnar
• Also got Sorine’s first crossbow quest
• Bought more raw materials than I needed because Gunnar’s forge doesn’t get built till after I rescue the Moth Priest, so stashed a bunch of materials in an empty barrel to get under carry weight
• Went out and boinged to college; talked to Urag and got his pointer to find the Moth Priest in Dragon Bridge
• Tried to boing to Statue of Meridia to not drop a dragon on Dragon Bridge
• Got a dragon! Also got three vampires, who killed me >_<
• Take two: saw shadow of a dragon, and got the vampires again, but this time I threw the dremora at them
• Briefly spotted a noble yelling for mercy, no sign of his horse or Imperial escort
• Team Dragonborn (Dawnguard edition!) prevailed
• Made it to Dragon Bridge
• Popped briefly into the inn to see if I could trigger Moth Priest dialogue with anybody that wasn’t a guard; answer: no
• Found an unfamiliar NPC in there that wasn’t so unfamiliar after all—Varnius! Greetings, Khajiit hopes you have not been in any more caves with frightening lights
• Varnius however had no interesting dialogue; neither did the Imperial soldier or the innkeeper
• Went back outside and talked to a guard and got the pointer to follow the caravan
• Went to Forebears’ Holdout and ran the place with no problems; rescued Dexion
• Returned to Fort Dawnguard
• Let Dexion read the first Elder Scroll, the one Serana had been carrying
• Retrieved my stashed materials from the barrel
• Spent a little time making armor and weapons to burn through my materials, also a couple bits of jewelry
• Got quest to go find Florentius from Sorine
• Sold Gunnar the items I made; also bought steel off of him to improve the Dawnguard armor up to Legendary
• Not quite under carry weight but could quaff travel to Lakeview
• Dropped off dragon bits and other assorted items
• Spent some time making potions, but not enough enchanting oomph to bother with enchanting
• Boinged from there to Honningbrew to sell some stuff to Mallus
• Decided perhaps unwisely to ride from there to Bilegulch
• Spotted and in many cases fought en route:
  • Another noble this time with horse and escort
  • Giant herding a painted cow
  • Possible farmer and another painted cow further along on the right of the road
  • Vuljotnaak!
  • Arch conjurer
  • Horse ran off somewhere in the middle of the Vuljotnaak battle; realized I could actually find him with the Detect Life spell; found up just up the hill from the slain conjurer
  • Bandits just past the turnoff to Sunderstone Gorge
  • Troll
• Reached the mine but killed trying to get in; thrown back to just after Vuljotnaak
• This time no encounters before reaching the mine
• Ran the mine and mostly stayed out of the way so Serana and the dremora could take the brunt of the fighting
• Got the schematic and other boss loot
• Came back out of the mine and saved for the night

Commentary

Not a great deal to comment upon here, since Dawnguard is familiar territory to me at this point, and not too much different from prior playthroughs happened in this session.

Really, I think the most unusual thing I can remark upon is that this made the fourth session in a row that Faanshi’s horse actually survived the entire session. 😀 I think some of the same strategy I’ve been using to try to keep me alive is also helping the horse, i.e., throwing powerful followers at anything that seems like it’s about to kill me. I strongly suspect that if I weren’t able to summon two dremora to throw at opponents, the horse would have a lot harder of a time.

Now that said, this hasn’t stopped the horse so far from periodically trying to run into battle with things. It went after both the bandits and the troll I encountered this time. But I’ve also seen the horse freak out and run off a ways. It’s still not clear to me exactly what provokes a horse into running off during combat, if it’s a matter of level of opponent it’s facing, how much health it has left, or maybe both.

Still though if I manage to make it through a week’s worth of play with a living horse, I’ll count that as a victory! We’ll see if said horse survives the next session, anyway.

Relatedly, it’s worth noting that this is perhaps the first time I actually got a really practical use out of the Detect Life spell. Because I realized for the first time, after that horse in fact ran off out of visible range, that I could use the spell to find it! This will be useful not only for future Faanshi sessions, but Shenner sessions as well.

Meanwhile, I ponder with some amusement what Faanshi thinks of Serana. Previous characters (e.g., Alarrah) I think were actively attracted to her, and that fueled their intent to help her. I don’t think that’s a factor with Faanshi, partly just because as a Khajiit, it’d be a lot harder for her to be attracted to non-Khajiit.

And partly because her heart is already getting claimed by Jordis, anyway. 😉 I don’t think Faanshi was very pleased at having to send her housecarl off, and I’m pretty sure Jordis wasn’t terribly pleased at having to leave her thane’s side, either. But, this is the consequence of running Dawnguard!

Next time

I’ve got both going to Castle Volkihar and finding Florentius queued up. And I expect I’ll be doing them in that order, specifically! In no small part because sneaking into Castle Volkihar means hitting up the Soul Cairn, and that’ll be at least a couple more sessions worth of play!

Screenshots

No screenshots this time.